Preview — The Uses of Disorder
by Richard Sennett

The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life

The distinguished social critic Richard Sennett here shows how the excessively ordered community freezes adults—both the young idealists and their security-oriented parents—into rigid attitudes that stifle personal growth. He argues that the accepted ideal of order generates patterns of behavior among the urban middle classes that are stultifying, narrow, and violence-pronThe distinguished social critic Richard Sennett here shows how the excessively ordered community freezes adults—both the young idealists and their security-oriented parents—into rigid attitudes that stifle personal growth. He argues that the accepted ideal of order generates patterns of behavior among the urban middle classes that are stultifying, narrow, and violence-prone. And he proposes a functioning city that can incorporate anarchy, diversity, and creative disorder to bring into being adults who can openly respond to and deal with the challenges of life....more

Without question, one of the most important books I have ever read. The fact that it's been virtually ignored over the past 40 years is a shame given its incredible social revalence in our current political climate. Essential reading.

It's difficult to believe that Sennett published this book when he was just 27-years-old. The book, written during the aftermath of the urban race riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in the summer of 1968, examines how the residents of cities form their identities amid so much chaos and and diversity. The book was also written at the beginning of what journalist Bill Bishop has termed "The Big Sort," when urban centers of the US became increasingly diverse and White mIt's difficult to believe that Sennett published this book when he was just 27-years-old. The book, written during the aftermath of the urban race riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in the summer of 1968, examines how the residents of cities form their identities amid so much chaos and and diversity. The book was also written at the beginning of what journalist Bill Bishop has termed "The Big Sort," when urban centers of the US became increasingly diverse and White middle class families fled that diversity by moving to the suburbs.

But even while post-war, middle class families fled to the suburbs, the Beats and flower children of the 1960s were already giving up on the dream of rural, communal living and turning their attention to the city. "For they have sensed in dense city life some possibility of fraternity, some new kind of warmth, that is now understood in the vague term 'community.'"

The 1960s is usually remembered for the Civil Rights movement, the anti-war protests, student mobilizations, and the countercultural moment. But we focus less of our attention on the incredible economic growth during the 1950s and 60s that led to a larger middle class and more affluence than any other country had ever achieved. Few intellectuals of the time, including Sennett, predicted what Timothy Noah has called "The Great Divergence;" that the US middle class would once again begin to contract in 1973 after decades of sustained growth. Rather, the intellectuals of the day assumed that we were moving from a society of scarcity to a society of abundance. And so Sennett asks this central question: "What does one do with community life when freedom from what has been achieved?"

Sennett paints two archetypical paths that the American middle class took at the end of the 1960s to achieve community life and individual identity: the suburbs and the cities. The suburbs offered their residents predictability, order, homogeneity, a sense of control over one's life. "Live with people you like," read a billboard I recently passed on the outskirts of Guadalajara. Cities, on the other hand, offered their residents little predictability, order, homogeneity, or control. To enter a suburb is to enter a comfortable house party with your closest friends, your favorite music, the kids playing in the pool, everything under control. It's easy to understand why this was a compelling vision of the good life for returning soldiers from World War II.

But Sennett is unapologetic in his celebration of the chaotic city over the orderly suburb:

This kind of family living in the suburbs surely is a little strange. Isn't this preference for suburbia as a setting for family life in reality an admission, tacit and unspoken to be sure, that the parents do not feel confident of their own human strengths to guide the child in the midst of an environment richer and more difficult than that of the neat lawns and tidy supermarkets of the suburbs?

And then: "Suburbanites are people who are afraid to live in a world they cannot control."

Sennett is compelling in his celebration of chaos and the city life. Foreshadowing his later book Together: The Rituals, Pleasures, and Politics of Cooperation (written some 40 years later), he notes that city life forces us to develop the social aptitude to negotiate uncomfortable situations, to make them comfortable. Ultimately, the city makes us more mature. He laments the mid-century relocation of "gambling dens and whorehouses from the city centers to the peripheries, and ultimately to Las Vegas. He prefers a world that recognizes, rather than outsources, its vice and depravity. Today our vices are outsources even further, to online gambling and porn sites, always accessible, but never real.

Cities offer us a path to the greatest reaches of social maturity. We form communities that aren't fixed or homogeneous, but rather that constantly shift, teetering on chaos and serendipity. We must become strong, and confident in ourselves, to engage in such diversity and dynamism.

3.5 stars. What Sennett has to say here about the structuring of cities, of the necessity of indeterminate structures that leads to creative combinations of people and positive conflict, is all great and very valuable insight. That he uses a bunch of psychoanalytic gobbledegook that trades in overly simplistic understandings of human development and maturation to get there is a bit unnecessary.

To put it simply, Richard Sennett in this book argues that cities are good for people precisely because of the unexpected encounters that tend to happen in cities. To put it another way, Sennett proposes that unpredictable experiences are good for people and that cities, with all their diversity, randomness, and disorder, are where such experiences occur. This makes his book something of a corollary to Jane Jacobs's Death and Life of Great American Cities, which had argued some 10 years earlier To put it simply, Richard Sennett in this book argues that cities are good for people precisely because of the unexpected encounters that tend to happen in cities. To put it another way, Sennett proposes that unpredictable experiences are good for people and that cities, with all their diversity, randomness, and disorder, are where such experiences occur. This makes his book something of a corollary to Jane Jacobs's Death and Life of Great American Cities, which had argued some 10 years earlier that variety is good for cities themselves. In 1970, when it was first published, The Uses of Disorder was part of an ongoing discussion of the value of suburbs; a Kirkus review from 1970 mentions that, as does a 2008 Guardian review of a new edition. But Sennett's views are important beyond that particular question—which, in any case, seems still to be unsettled.

The book has an indirect political implication, for instance. As the phrase "family values" reminds us, a certain variety of conservative regards the family as essentially the only social unit larger than the individual, or at least the only one worth talking about. Sennett clearly disagrees. And unless I'm much mistaken, he responds in this book to the notion that big cities degrade families in a statement like this: "Families have done more harm to cities than cities have ever done to families."

Though analogies are always questionable to some extent, it's worth pointing out that Sennett's position here is analogous to what's called the hygiene hypothesis. The argument of that hypothesis is that the human immune system requires contact with pathogens in order to develop and maintain its strength, which means that obsessive attempts to eliminate bacteria from the home can be bad, at least for children. Likewise, to quote from a description on Sennett's website, this book proposes that cities characterized by "anarchy, diversity, and creative disorder" can "bring into being adults who can openly respond to and deal with the challenges of life."

I notice in passing that a similar argument can be made about one's use of the Internet: it'd be better for us to seek out viewpoints other than those we already hold.

(Like almost all of my other reviews, this one is based on my memory of the book at hand. I read The Uses of Disorder roughly 15 years ago.)...more

For me, this book was more interesting as a historical document, and (perhaps) as a reminder of how embarrassing our young selves can be when viewed through older, wiser eyes. I believe those are the eyes through which the author, Richard Sennet, viewed his own work years later when he wrote the preface to my edition in 2008, some 40 years after it was originally published. He points out that this is a book that was written when he was 25, and that itFull disclosure: I did not finish this book.

For me, this book was more interesting as a historical document, and (perhaps) as a reminder of how embarrassing our young selves can be when viewed through older, wiser eyes. I believe those are the eyes through which the author, Richard Sennet, viewed his own work years later when he wrote the preface to my edition in 2008, some 40 years after it was originally published. He points out that this is a book that was written when he was 25, and that it belongs to a particular time and place, a time when the radical left believed that America was on the cusp of revolutionary change.

Viewed in that light, it is an interesting read, but I found the lack of intellectual rigour, and the dubious connections drawn from one point to the next, to be frustrating. Ultimately I realised that I wasn't going to get what I hoped for when I first picked it up: A coherent, interesting argument as to the value of cities, and the disorder inherent therein, in forming human personalities and societies....more

Richard Sennett has explored how individuals and groups make social and cultural sense of material facts -- about the cities in which they live and about the labour they do. He focuses on how people can become competent interpreters of their own experience, despite the obstacles society may put in their way. His research entails ethnography, history, and social theory. As a social analyst, Mr. SenRichard Sennett has explored how individuals and groups make social and cultural sense of material facts -- about the cities in which they live and about the labour they do. He focuses on how people can become competent interpreters of their own experience, despite the obstacles society may put in their way. His research entails ethnography, history, and social theory. As a social analyst, Mr. Sennett continues the pragmatist tradition begun by William James and John Dewey.

His first book, The Uses of Disorder, [1970] looked at how personal identity takes form in the modern city. He then studied how working-class identities are shaped in modern society, in The Hidden Injuries of Class, written with Jonathan Cobb. [1972] A study of the public realm of cities, The Fall of Public Man, appeared in 1977; at the end of this decade of writing, Mr. Sennett sought to account the philosophic implications of this work in Authority [1980].

At this point he took a break from sociology, composing three novels: The Frog who Dared to Croak [1982], An Evening of Brahms [1984] and Palais Royal [1987]. He then returned to urban studies with two books, The Conscience of the Eye, [1990], a work focusing on urban design, and Flesh and Stone [1992], a general historical study of how bodily experience has been shaped by the evolution of cities.

In the mid 1990s, as the work-world of modern capitalism began to alter quickly and radically, Mr. Sennett began a project charting its personal consequences for workers, a project which has carried him up to the present day. The first of these studies, The Corrosion of Character, [1998] is an ethnographic account of how middle-level employees make sense of the “new economy.” The second in the series, Respect in a World of Inequality, [2002} charts the effects of new ways of working on the welfare state; a third, The Culture of the New Capitalism, [2006] provides an over-view of change. Most recently, Mr. Sennett has explored more positive aspects of labor in The Craftsman [2008], and in Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation [2012]. ...more